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<table width="100%" summary="page for UStaxWords"><tr><td>UStaxWords</td><td style="text-align: right;">R Documentation</td></tr></table>

<h2> Number of Words in US Tax Law</h2>

<h3>Description</h3>

<p>Thousands of words in US tax law for 1995
to 2015 in 10 year intervals.  This
includes income taxes and all taxes in the
code itself (written by congress) and
regulations (written by government 
administrators).  For 2015 only 
<code>EntireTaxCodeAndRegs</code> is given;  for other
years, this number is broken down by income
tax vs. other taxes and code vs. 
regulations.  
</p>


<h3>Usage</h3>

<pre>data(UStaxWords)</pre>


<h3>Format</h3>

<p>A <code>data.frame</code> containing:
</p>

<dl>
<dt>year</dt><dd><p> tax year </p>
</dd>
<dt>IncomeTaxCode</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in the US 
income tax code
</p>
</dd>
<dt>otherTaxCode</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in US tax 
code other than income tax
</p>
</dd>
<dt>EntireTaxCode</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in the US 
tax code
</p>
</dd>
<dt>IncomeTaxRegulations</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in US 
income tax regulations
</p>
</dd>
<dt>otherTaxRegulations</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in US tax
regulations other than income tax
</p>
</dd>
<dt>IncomeTaxCodeAndRegs</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in both 
the code and regulations for the US
income tax
</p>
</dd>
<dt>otherTaxCodeAndRegs</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in both 
code and regulations for US taxes apart
from income taxes.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>EntireTaxCodeAndRegs</dt><dd>
<p>number of words in thousands in US tax 
code and regulations
</p>
</dd>
</dl>



<h3>Details</h3>

<p>Thousands of words in the US tax code and 
federal tax regulations, 1955-2015.  This
is based on data from the Tax Foundation
(taxfoundation.org), adjusted to eliminate
an obvious questionable observation in
<code>otherTaxRegulations</code> for 1965.  The
numbers of words in 
<code>otherTaxRegulations</code> was not reported
directly by the Tax Foundation but is
easily computed as the difference between
their Income and Entire tax numbers.  This
series  shows the numbers falling by 48
percent between 1965 and 1975 and by 1.5
percent between 1995 and 2005.  These are
the only declines seen in these numbers
and seem inconsistent with the common 
concern (expressed e.g., in Moody,
Warcholik and Hodge, 2005) about the
difficulties of simplifying any 
governmental program, because vested 
interest appear to defend almost anything.
Lessig (2011) notes that virtually all
provisions of US law that favor certain
segments of society are set to expire after
a modest number of years.  These sunset
provisions provide recurring opportunities
for incumbent politicians to extort 
campaign contributions from those same
segments to ensure the continuation of the
favorable treatment.  
</p>
<p>The decline of 48 percent in 
<code>otherTaxRegulations</code> seems more 
curious for two additional reasons:  First,
it was preceded by a tripling of 
<code>otherTaxRegulations</code> between 1955 and
1965.  Second, it was NOT accompanied by
any comparable behavior of 
<code>otherTaxCode</code>. Instead, the latter 
grew each decade by between 17 and 53
percent, similar to but slower than the
growth in <code>IncomeTaxCode</code> and 
<code>IncomeTaxRegulations</code>.
</p>
<p>Accordingly, <code>otherTaxRegulations</code> for
1965 is replaced by the average of the
numbers for 1955 and 1975, and 
<code>EntireTaxRegulations</code> for 1965 is
comparably adjusted.  This replaces (1322,
2960) for those two variables for 1965
with (565, 2203).  In addition, 
<code>otherTaxCodeAndRegs</code> and
<code>EntireTaxCodeAndRegulations</code> are also
changed from (1626, 3507) to (870, 2751).
</p>
<p>Independent of whether this adjustment is 
correct or not, it's clear that there have
been roughly 3 words of regulations for
each word in the tax code.  Most of these
are income tax regulations, which have
recently contained 4.5 words for every
word in code. The income tax code currently
includes roughly 50 percent more words than
other tax code.
</p>


<h3>Author(s)</h3>

<p>Spencer Graves</p>


<h3>Source</h3>

<p><a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/number-words-internal-revenue-code-and-federal-tax-regulations-1955-2005">Tax
Foundation:  Number of Words in Internal Revenue Code and Federal
Tax Regulations, 1955-2005</a>
Scott Greenberg, <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/blog/federal-tax-laws-and-regulations-are-now-over-10-million-words-long">&quot;Federal Tax Laws and Regulations are
Now Over 10 Million Words Long&quot;, October 08, 2015</a>
</p>


<h3>References</h3>

<p>J. Scott Moody, Wendy P. Warcholik, and Scott A. Hodge (2005) &quot;The
Rising Cost of Complying with the Federal Income Tax&quot;, The Tax
Foundation Special Report No. 138.
</p>


<h3>Examples</h3>

<pre>
data(UStaxWords)
plot(EntireTaxCodeAndRegs/1000 ~ year, UStaxWords, 
  type='b',
  ylab='Millions of words in US tax code &amp; regs')

# Write to a file for Wikimedia Commons
## Not run: 
svg('UStaxWords.svg')

## End(Not run)
matplot(UStaxWords$year, UStaxWords[c(2:3, 5:6)]/1000,
    type='b', bty='n', ylab='',
    ylim=c(0, max(UStaxWords$EntireTaxCodeAndRegs)/1000),
    las=1, xlab="", cex.axis=2)
lines(EntireTaxCodeAndRegs/1000~year, UStaxWords, lwd=2)
## Not run: 
dev.off()

## End(Not run)
# lines 1:4 = IncomeTaxCode, otherTaxCode, 
#   IncomeTaxRegulations,
#   and otherTaxRegulations, respectively

##
## Plotting the original numbers 
##      without the adjustment
##
UStax. &lt;- UStaxWords
UStax.[2,c(6:7, 9:10)] &lt;- c(1322, 2960, 1626, 3507)
matplot(UStax.$year, UStax.[c(2:3, 5:6)]/1000,
      type='b', bty='n', ylab='',
      ylim=c(0, max(
          UStax.$EntireTaxCodeAndRegs)/1000),
      las=1, xlab="", cex.axis=2)
lines(EntireTaxCodeAndRegs/1000~year, UStax., 
        lwd=2)
# Note especially the anomalous behaviour of 
# line 4 = otherTaxRegulations.  As noted with
# "details" above, otherTaxRegulations could have
# tripled between 1955 and 1965, then fallen by 48
# percent between 1965 and 1975.  However, that
# does not seem credible, especially since there
# was no corresponding behavior in otherTaxCode.

##
## linear trend 
##
(newWdsPerYr &lt;- lm(EntireTaxCodeAndRegs~year, 
    UStaxWords))
plot(UStaxWords$year, resid(newWdsPerYr))
# Roughly 150,000 additional words added each year
# since 1955.  
# No indication of nonlinearity.  
# adusted R-squared exceeds 99 percent.  

##
## linear trend with increased slope
## during the Reagan years
##
# linear spline with knots at
# 1981 and 1989 
Reagan &lt;- pmax(0, pmin(
  (UStaxWords$year-1981)/8, 1))
plot(Reagan~year, UStaxWords, type='b')
UStaxWords$Reagan &lt;- Reagan

ReaganMdl &lt;- 
  EntireTaxCodeAndRegs~year + Reagan
fitReagan &lt;- lm(ReaganMdl, UStaxWords )
summary(fitReagan)

</pre>


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